Archive for April, 2010

Stop press! At last a free cash point in Eastside – a Natwest cashpoint will be located by the new Nisa convenience store, just next to the Digbeth High Street entrance of Birmingham Coach Station.
To celebrate this auspicious occasion there will be an opening ceremony at 6pm tonight – read all about it onDIGBETH IS GOOD

Mitchy Bwoy has a vast portfolio of work mainly in music and clothing design and he continues to innovate & diversify. Post ‘graff’ / post ‘pop’ / post ‘whatever you like’….

The fantastic designer and artist Mitchy Bwoy’s Exhibition is now on at Birmingham’s Sauce Gallery until June to showcase some of his amazing work.

From Reggae to Roots, Balkan Beats to Bruk, Dub Step to Disco, whatever you’re into, Mitchy Bwoy is likely to have made his mark on your record collection at some point.

Working from his own London studio over the last 10 years, Mitch has carved his own niche not only in music cover design but also in illustration, fashion, and more recently, video production.

His work has become synonymous with new music and club culture, working alongside the most prominent musicians of the last decade, including Chase & Status, Amp Fiddler, Bugz in the Attic, Nitin Sawhney, Ziggy Marley, Howie B and many others.

In addition, Mitch has worked on many special projects, live paints and collaborations with other artists: 55 Roots for 55 DSL (live paint and group art show with Dragon and Shibuya from Japan), Bacardi brand development (with Mode 2) and Blak Twang/We Love You album projects with Banksy.

Yet more action at the Edge, this time you can banish those election night blues, while you’re waiting for inevitable disappointment by seeking Sonic Asylum.

That’s Asylum as in sanctuary.

Headlining is Canadian folk band, The Wilderness of Manitoba, all the way from Canadia. More info about them can be found on Magpie Brown’s site here. Able assistance will be provided by performance art group Bet4, all the way from deepest Derbyshire, who perform work intended to harness the power of synaesthaesia. Or something, you’ll have to see for yourself or go here. This will be followed by a Musery set by Dr Soesmix, playing tunes intended to heal and groove you, simultaneously. All this, interactive sonic installations and sonic toys, a ‘sonically healing tardis’ to enter, hot chocolate, cupcakes, a communal rangoli we’ll all make together and loads of comfy sofas and chairs to chillax on. There’s a limited capacity so please let us know at info@edgearts.com how many tickets you’ll need (each one a limited edition artist’s print).

You’ll forget where you put your ‘X’. See you at the Edge…

Don’t forget, we have an Open Call Out to anyone who needs a space to do anything, public or private, art or not-art, just get in touch and we’ll just make things happen, in a just way.

Eastside Projects publications are now available to buy online through our brand new bookshop. Just browse through the publications pages at the Eastside Projects website to find the Google Checkout ‘Buy Now’ buttons.

It’s quick, clean and easy, and open 24/7. Recent titles include Liam Gillick ‘Two Short Plays’, Has Man a Function in Universe?, and Simon & Tom Bloor ‘As long as it lasts’. Buy now to ensure positive reading experiences.

As ever, you can still visit the gallery’s physical bookshop, which also stocks the latest art magazines and journals.

We were then taken on a ramble through the creative hub of Eastside Birmingham. In the industrial buildings which line the river there are springing up artist spaces and studios, between artist run space Eastside Projects, The Flatpack Festival and Vivid, another industrial Art space there is much to be anticipated of this community. The most notable thing perhaps being the comparatively plush and affordable studio space providing a great springboard for the artists and creative businesses inhabiting them.

Planes might be grounded by the Project Pigeon birds certainly aren’t! We did amazingly well this week, we got in the cards (in top 6 out of 22) and might even win some money!! There was oohing and ahhing when our time was read out at the club last night!

The pigeons were up from Bath in a light West South West wind at 11.15, our first pigeon was back at 12.44, the next 12.46, the next 12.47 and the last 12.58. Their velocity was about 1482 (yards per minute)! Dream Team!

It was really exciting at the club tonight, lots of anticipation in the air. I helped with the marking which was really good… Project Pigeon has put four pigeons in the race, don’t know if we’ll sleep tonight… I hope they make it back to Birmingham OK…

A couple of bits of news from the Edge. Firstly, next up is the inestimable fizzPOP ‘theremin day’ on the 24th of April. The workshops during the day are full, but there are still tickets available for the evening theremin concert – go to fizzPOP for more info.

Everyone loves a theremin!

Secondly, we are launching a new website, dedicated to all things ‘the Edge’, including what’s on, what’s coming up and what’s happened. To accompany this we are issuing an ‘open call-out’ to anyone wishing to produce or present an event/exhibition/performance/workshop/installation/jelly fight at the space. Go to www.edgearts.com or the open call out page, for more information. We’ll also be announcing our ‘election night blues-buster’ event here next week, so watch this space.

You haven’t heard from Project Pigeon for a while… we’ve been very busy. The first race of the old bird 2010 season is days away and over the last week we’ve been training the birds. They need to be on form and get fit again after the winter and after they have been sitting on their nests all day. Five tosses from Worcester and two from Licky Hills should do it. We’ll let you know how we get on in the race on Saturday (from Bath). I’m looking forward to the shivers and pounding heart, nothing else gets the adrenalin rushing like it. Alongside training the old birds we’re weaning the young birds, helping them learn to fly and training them to use the trap (the devise that lets them into the loft but doesn’t let them out). It’s a long and time consuming process, one which really tests my patience! (see photos below).

As well as this a pigeon fancier from Walsall (lovely Ray) has donated two pedigree pigeons to Project Pigeon. We have a family tree and they are related to ‘Gustav’, a pigeon that delivered the first message from the Normandy Beaches from a ship off the beach-head while serving with the RAF in 1944. He won a Dickin medal for his bravery. How cool is that!!?

Pigeon fanciers are eccentric by nature, Ray is no exception. He’s an inventor, indeed he invented the pigeon harness, a device used to suspend your pigeon in if he breaks his leg or wing. He’s a geneticist and has developed a new breed of pigeon (like Darwin) – the ‘reverse grizzle’, rather than the black fading to white the white fades into the black (see photo below – this is the only one in the world, she has just laid two eggs so fingers crossed for them). He has a CB radio transmitting in his loft all the time to teach the pigeons about radio waves. He put his cocks in the freezer pre breeding, this is so the best ‘Z’ sperm has more of a chance than the other sperm at fertilizing the egg. And much much more…

A similar scent of frustrated optimism pervaded Birmingham during the excellent Flatpack film festival. Flatpack is a six-day event that aims to spill out across Digbeth, the abandoned factory and warehouse district now being occupied by the so-called culture industry. The city of 1,001 trades wants to reinvent itself as the city of 1,001 media firms, fashion labels and organic coffee shops. A loose collective of arts groups called We Are Eastside is trying to turn Digbeth into Birmingham’s “cultural playground”, the same method that has been employed across England’s old manufacturing bases. With new high-speed rail lines reducing the journey time from Euston to 46 minutes, the city even has one eye on persuading bored London hipsters to take a weekend trip to Brum.